


Sticks and Stones

by Sladeckta



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Cop AU, Kidnapping, Lance and Keith are DL dating so they dont get split as partners, M/M, Rated E for explicit, The archive warning is for graphic violence, Will add more tags as updated, and also Keith's language, kuro has locked onto keith, probable eventual smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-28
Updated: 2018-11-28
Packaged: 2019-09-01 15:27:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16767862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sladeckta/pseuds/Sladeckta
Summary: Keith took his job at the Houston Police Department very seriously, a decorated officer among his ranks. He got there by sprinting full speed into danger with reckless abandon, if it meant taking down a suspect. This recklessness sticks him in a hell of a lot more trouble than he honestly signed up for when he falls for a (blatantly obvious, in hindsight) trap set by a man who seems more demon than man. After a quite terrifying sequence of events, Keith is faced with a choice that decides the fate of the man that has rained hell down upon him and the partner he loves. Keith's final decision could either make him...Or break him.





	Sticks and Stones

Normally, the chaos of social atmospheres was detrimental to Keith’s sanity; the obnoxious cheers and laughs of other bar-goers,glasses clinking loudly in his overly sensitive ears, the decent-enough-to-pass live cover band on stage. Though, Keith could confidently say that he found solace in people watching. People were always entertaining to watch, especially when 85% of the bar is sloshed and he isn’t terribly sober himself.

Though, Keith had, as of the last year or so, mostly just watched his partner in anti-crime.

Lance was seated beside him at the bar, the stool spun backwards so that he could lean his upper back against the bar top. The Cuban’s elbows rested behind him on the surface, shoulders at his ears. The pose displayed his relative relaxation to everyone in the near vicinity. He had a drink - a gin and tonic - clawed in his hand, which hung off the bar precariously. The freckles on Lance’s face were even more prominent in the building’s warm lighting, cobalt eyes glinting orange whenever he turned his head.

Keith’s heart skipped every time those eyes would turn to him, bright and excited.

God, they’d been dating for what, six months now? Keith still hadn’t gotten through the lovesick puppy stage. He was just glad he’d mostly been able to keep it under wraps when it mattered - like at work.

They had been assigned partners down at the precinct, which Keith even to this day recalls as simultaneously the best and worst day of his entire fucking career as a cop.

*

###### 

*

_“Who the fuck are you and what are you doing in my chair?”_

_Keith had spat this through grit teeth and narrowed almond eyes, actively reminding himself not to crush the to-go cup of freshly made black coffee in his hand. He stood in front of his desk, a deep scowl fixed on his face directed at the stranger occupying his most sacred work space._

_The tanned man grinned and dropped his feet from the top of his desk (Keith ground his teeth in fury) to the floor, standing. The Texan was only further infuriated to discover he was shorter by barely a couple inches._

_“The name’s Lance. Lance McClain. And I hear that you’re my new partner.”_

_Keith slammed his coffee down on his desk, thankful it had a cap on it. He pressed his weight into the desk and leaned forward on his hands, glaring heatedly up at this cocky son of a bitch in his fucking desk.._

_“No way. Not happening.”_

_Keith hadn’t had a partner in years. No one had been able to handle his mildly (read: extremely) rash decision making that would ultimately benefit the case and/or solve it. He was quick to break away from his partner to dive headfirst into danger in pursuit of a perpetrator or suspect. In hindsight, Keith could admit that he probably should think first, act second. However, when the moment arose, adrenaline pumping through his veins, his brain sort of went on auto-pilot._

_As a result, you can imagine that his past partners might have a problem with being paired with a lone wolf. He’d only had three. Keith didn’t even remember their names, quite honestly._

_How any of this translated to him being a good mentor, Keith would never know._

_“I don’t need a partner. Certainly not a greenhorn rookie who has no idea what the fuck he’s doing.”_

_“Hey, I know what I’m doing!”_

_Lance had moved from behind his desk to stand just to the side - directly in Keith’s fucking way._

_“Why don’t I believe you?”_

_Keith shouldered past Lance to storm off in the direction of Kolivan’s office, metaphorical flames of fury heating his mouth and throat. He could feel Lance’s presence behind him as he followed, quickly growing irritated as he stepped on Keith’s heels all the way into the office - the shorter of the two not bothering to announce his presence._

_He had no need. The walls were glass. Kolivan could very well see him coming._

_The man himself looked virtually unaffected by Keith’s anger, simply looking up at the pair with a neutral facial expression, if not mild annoyance. He was seated behind his large glass desk, peering at something on a monitor to his left through a pair of thinly framed reading glasses. The surface of the desk was covered in stacks of files and individual packets and sheets of paper. Aside from his desk, the room was immaculate, though Keith couldn’t say he was extremely comfortable with all of the walls being glass._

_That just meant the whole precinct was to witness his complete mental breakdown._

_“Ahh, I see you two got acquainted.”_

_The twin yells of distress that followed Kolivan’s statement forced his lips to quirk up and Keith very much noticed._

_“What the hell are you smirking at!? I can’t work with him! He’s a newbie! He’s just going to get in my way!” Keith growled in exasperation, gesturing wildly to the man standing somewhere to his right without looking at him._

_Lance placed a hand over his heart, mock hurt flashing across his face. “Hey! I resent that!”_

_The Cuban was ignored by both parties as Kolivan spoke over him. His eyes were glued to Keith with his hands folded in front of his face and his elbows on the desk. “Exactly, Who better to teach a rookie the ropes than our best cop?”_

_Keith and Lance immediately formed scowls to mirror each other’s, much to the amusement of their superior._

_“I’m your best cop because I don’t have rookies holding me back!” Keith protested, leaning on his hands over Kolivan’s desk, a pleading look on his face. This couldn’t be happening. What the hell made Kolivan think he had the patience to train a cop straight out of the academy?_

_Kolivan wasn’t impressed. He took his glasses off and folded them on his desk. “Then you better help him graduate from rookie status pretty quick, huh?”_

_Keith threw his arms in the air, swearing loudly. To anyone outside of the office, there was only silence plus Keith’s wild gestures. Lance, feeling the need to defend himself, fired back several tasteful insults in Spanish, stepping to Keith, who turned and grabbed him by the collar, pulling him down to his level with fire in his eyes. Keith growled and got as up in the other’s face as he could without physically touching him. Lance was cracking his knuckles and had shoved the sleeve of his Houston Police sweatshirt up._

_“Enough!”_

_Having realized they were still in their superior’s office, the two separated and turned away from each other. Keith crossed his arms, digging his nails into his biceps and Lance forced his hands as deep into his jean pockets as he could manage._

_“Kogane, you have a new case. And I expect you to bring McClain with you.”_

_Keith angrily dragged a hand through his hair and turned on his heel, slamming open the door and storming back to his desk to grab his now fucking lukewarm coffee in it’s slightly dented to-go cup. He wouldn’t even dream of leaving it behind._

_Lance’s life depended on it._

*

###### 

*

Keith leaned forward on his elbow and smiled down at his drink, swishing it around before downing the rest of the glass. 

“What are you smiling about?”

Keith looked over, heart doing the stupid thing again as he met eyes with his partner and boyfriend. 

“Nothing.”

Lance eyed him, a perfect eyebrow arching curiously, before downing the rest of his drink. His face was flushed from the alcohol, as Keith was sure his own was. Lance turned back to him.

“It’s getting late, it’s already ten. We still have to report at 0800.” He said and Keith sighed, nodding.

“Can’t you just stick to one method of telling time?”

“Why would I do that? It annoys you when I don’t.”

Keith was sure his eyes wouldn’t return to the front of his head with how hard he’d rolled them.

Lance slapped a twenty onto the bar and slid off his stool, Keith following quickly, not exactly comfortable losing his anchor in this crowd. A long arm draped itself over Keith’s shoulders and Keith slid his own around Lance’s waist to hook his thumb in the belt loop on his hip. He was unable to stop the small tipsy smile from forming on his lips.

The pair maneuvered through the crowd to the front doors and stepped out into the cool November night. Keith shivered slightly, reaching to zip up his leather jacket. He’d never been one for 40 degree weather. Lance stopped at the sidewalk, turning to face Keith with a frown on his lips, his hands relocating to Keith’s shoulders. His brow was knit in concern.

“Hunk is on his way.” Lance said. “Are you sure your ride is coming? Because you always say you have a ride and then end up running home at night like a white girl in a horror movie. And I’m really not down for you to get chased by some crazy ax murderer.”

In Keith’s defense, night running had become one of his favorite hobbies. It gave him time to clear his head. He quite enjoyed the burn in his legs and lungs. When he was running, it was like none of his anxieties could touch him. Freedom. It was addictive.

It wasn’t his fault that no one wanted to run several miles with him at one in the morning on a Wednesday.

Keith blinked, smiling sheepishly. “Yes, Lance. I’ll be fine.” He insisted, pulling Lance’s hands from his shoulders to hold them in his own. “I’ll text you when I get home, if it makes you feel any better. But you seem to forget I’m not helpless. In fact, I’m completely positive I could take you in a fight.” He smirked.

Lance scowled at him. “Just because you’re a good cop doesn’t mean you’re invincible, Keith.”

Keith shrugged and looked past Lance’s shoulder as he heard a quick honk. He eyed Hunk’s gold Corolla, a thick tan arm waving over the hood. “Hunk is here.”

Lance turned to look at his roommate’s car and then back at Keith.

“You better text me when you get home. I’ll lose my shit if you don’t. Go all Liam Neeson.” He said, jokingly, though Keith could hear the anxious undertones to his voice. He could see it in the way those blue eyes shifted over Keith’s own, looking for reassurance.

“I promise I will text you.”

Lance nodded and exhaled, seemingly satisfied, before leaning down to steal a quick kiss. Keith let his eyes slide closed, enjoying the maybe half a second long peck. But Lance’s lips were soft and warm and a little wet, but he really didn’t mind. At this point, he wasn't sure if his head felt light because of Lance’s spicy cinnamon smell or because of the alcohol coursing through his veins.

After a second, the blue eyed beauty pulled away and jogged over to Hunk’s car, spinning around backwards to shoot Keith twin finger guns as he did so, catching Keith red-handed in staring at his ass.

A flush of his cheeks and Keith turned away from him, digging out his headphones for the run back.

***

The familiar burning ache in his extremities felt good, freeing. His hair flopped behind him in the refreshingly cool wind. He’d decided to take the long way home to his cabin, feeling the need to regain his sobriety in an attempt to curb any possible nightmarish dreams or horizontal motion sickness whenever he closed his eyes, though usually, the latter happened anyway. He could pretend like he could change it, it’s fine.

His earphones blasted the Glass Animals’ ZABA album, currently playing _Hazey’._ One of his favorites personal favorites on this album.

At this point in his run, he was running along a two-lane highway of sorts though there was only one car about every ten minutes. Dense woods stretched along either side of the road, past the four to five foot deep ditches that also flanked the pavement. He was running by the light on his phone, as there weren’t any street lights around here.

In hindsight, the build up to what happened soon after should have been expected. It was basically textbook.

However, Keith’s ever so famous lack of rationale led him to approach the rusted junker of a car that was angled into the ditch off to his right. It didn’t look like there was anyone inside, upon further inspection with his phone’s light. However, his eye did catch a dark stain on the surface and up the back rest of the driver’s side seat, what he immediately recognized to be dried blood.

He noticed a smear of blood on the handle and stepped back, investigating the brown grass of the ditch. Splatters of red led in a trail into the woods. Was someone injured in the crash? The all-too-familiar tug of adrenaline set his feet in motion, following the trail of blood droplets.

Keith followed the trail for about five minutes before he spotted what appeared to be a break in the dense trees. He stepped into a clearing of overgrown grass and weeds. He shone his light on what looked to be a small, abandoned, one-story sham of a house out in the middle of nowhere. There wasn’t even a driveway. It was just sort of… here. As far as Keith could tell, there weren’t any visible lights on in the building. In fact, the whole building looked like no one had been there at all in years. 

The wood was faded and warped, the porch visibly sloping downward off to the right side. The support beams were rotted and Keith genuinely couldn’t tell what color the paint was supposed to be originally. Most of the railing had fallen away, to violence or overexposure to the weather, he had no idea, though some of it did appear to have been ripped away by force. Most of the windows were damaged in some fashion or another. The plastic wrap that had been used in an attempt to at one point stem the airflow of a few windows crinkled slightly in the breeze.

It was eerily quiet, and the hairs on the back of Keith’s neck were standing at attention. Something felt wrong about this entire situation. Which, looking back, he really should have listened to his gut.

A voice in the back of his head that sounded suspiciously like a certain ocean-eyed idiot yelled partially Spanish obscenities at him as he approached the shady looking structure, hand ghosting over the knife tucked into his waistband. Several years as a cop had him paranoid even when not on the job.

And for good reason it seemed.

Keith placed a cautious foot onto the first of two stairs leading onto the porch. The blood trail led to the door and smeared against the door handle and the frame next to it. 

“Hello? Are you hurt?” He called, voice sounding too loud in the silence of the forest.

“No, but you will be.”

Keith spun on his heels, dagger drawn and in the reverse position. He had barely gotten a glimpse of his attacker before a long stick (what Keith would later realize to be a section of the railing - the section he had noticed was torn from the porch’s foundation) came swinging forcefully at the left side of his head.

The only things he could make out were unnervingly gold eyes and a cheshire grin before his vision exploded in black.

Lance was going to kill him.

**Author's Note:**

> I've decided to post this chapter by chapter to hopefully keep me motivated to type it up, honestly. Please comment your feedback!


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